The golden age is… now?

These times are certainly very unusual. And that's one of the few things we'll all agree on. Not only in the sense of specific events, wars, the recently concluded pandemic, political turmoil, economic instability and environmental threats. The perception of the world that seems to prevail is dark, there is a sense of personal and collective confusion, even fear, a dystopian future is seen as almost certain. And that, it seems, applies to all societies, regardless of their economic or military power, level of development or tradition. Conservatives and liberals, laymen and priests, atheists and the devout, poor and rich share, almost nurture, that feeling. Optimism has become a heretical, subversive concept. It is incomparably more popular, and sometimes even more profitable, to be a hard pessimist - the times we live in are unbearable and never harder, people are unhappy, the world is a terrible place, and tomorrow it will be even worse. And that is indeed the prevailing view of things in both private and public space. Caitgeist is depressed and dark, and few expect that to change anytime soon.

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But despite such a zeitgeist, the facts are inexorable, and therefore here is a heretical statement - by all criteria, this is the best moment in human history, and it is a tremendous privilege to live in it. We know, of course, that big statements like this require big evidence, this is an opportunity, right before the New Year, to give them a boost. But first of all, right away, already at the beginning, we will point out what makes this time better than all the previous ones. These are science and reason. We will also tell where the greatest danger is coming from. These are superstition, religious stupidity and arrogance.

So, on to the evidence... Let's first look at things in a historical context and look for other periods that could compete with ours in the race for the title of Best Time to Be Alive, and it's interesting that more or less all historians and researchers agree on that. Their list of five such epochs, ranked from fifth to first, would look like this:

5. Postwar America, the first decade after World War II. A period sometimes known as the Golden Age of Capitalism, a time of rapid growth and industrialization throughout the United States. More and more Americans, thanks to higher wages and living standards, moved from urban areas to the suburbs, behind the white picket fences and rose gardens in front of their houses, a strong middle class emerged. At the state level, large infrastructure projects were undertaken, and the gross national product increased from 200 billion dollars in 1940 to 500 billion dollars in 1960.

4. The Pax Romana, from the end of the first century BC to the second century BC Roman Peace, was, as its name suggests, a period of relative peace throughout the Roman world, when the small Roman republic was transformed into one of the largest empires in history, with more than 70 million inhabitants, which at that time was a third of the world's population. It was also a time of great technological achievements, especially in architecture. A branched network of roads and aqueducts was built throughout the empire, which further encouraged the trade and exchange of goods, people and ideas in the empire, and left us, now quite spent, the maxim that all roads lead to Rome.

3. Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad, 8th to 13th century. It began with the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate, based in Baghdad. Scientists, funded and supported by the Caliph and other members of the royal family, made many fundamental discoveries in the fields of science, technology and medicine. Building on knowledge from ancient cultures such as India, China and Greece, these discoveries laid the foundation for the scientific revolution in Europe. Unfortunately, many writings from that era disappeared in the invasion of the Mongols in 1258, when the Great Library of Baghdad, the famous House of Wisdom of the legendary Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, an even more famous hero, was destroyed. A thousand and one nights.

2. Italian Renaissance, Florence, 15th century. A period known as the zenith of European art and science, when the hard, arduous lifestyle of the Middle Ages was replaced by a freer approach to life and individualism, later known as humanism. The wealthy citizens of Florence invested time and money in art, culture and science, which led to the emergence of many outstanding artists, writers and scientists, such as Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Michelangelo, Machiavelli and others.

1. The Golden Age of Athens, 5th century BC It coincides with the reign of Pericles from about 461 to 429 BC when Athens was the leader of the Delian League, an alliance of more than ten surrounding states. The development of trade and production and the newly created wealth enabled an unprecedented flourishing of philosophy, science, logic, mathematics, theater and art. It was the time of Euclid and Pythagoras, Sophocles and Euripides, Hippocrates, Plato and Socrates, Herodotus and Thucydides. Democracy was "discovered". According to undivided opinions, the foundations of our civilization were laid then.

Based on the above, it must be admitted that that Athens, similar to Rome a little later, was a very decent place to live. If you are not poor, a slave, a foreigner or a woman, of course. Well, this is exactly where we come to perhaps the most important question - does the prosperity of a country necessarily mean betterment for all or at least for the majority of its inhabitants. And this is exactly what distinguishes our time from all those listed on our list.

The average life expectancy worldwide at the beginning of the 19th century was 31 years, in 1950 it was 48, and now it is 71,5, and in more than 40 countries, including almost all countries in the Western world, life expectancy exceeds 80 years. In the mid-18th century, 40 percent of children died before their 15th birthday. Today, global child mortality is 4 percent. In the Nordic countries and Japan, it is 0,3 percent. Today, we have the most modern medicines - antibiotics, vaccines, we have mapped the human genome and are better at diagnosis, prevention and treatment. A whole series of diseases such as malaria, diphtheria, polio, rabies, smallpox or tuberculosis have been almost completely eradicated. Believe it or not, today we live in the most peaceful era in the existence of our species, there are fewer wars, and fewer people die in them. Ray Kurzweil, American scientist and futurist says: "People think the world is getting worse. What's actually happening is that our information about what's wrong in the world is getting better and better." The death rate in wars has fallen from nearly 300 casualties per 100.000 population during World War II, to single digits in the 1s, and to less than 21 in the 50st century. Food production has exceeded the needs of humanity, the world currently produces XNUMX percent more food than is necessary to feed the entire population of the planet.

According to data presented by Marian L. Tupi, of the Keto Institute in the United States, most people throughout history until the 20th century lived on the equivalent of $2 a day. Today, the global average is $35. Absolute poverty fell from 90 percent in the 19th century, to 40 percent in 1980, down to 10 percent today. Famine was once common, and average food consumption in France did not reach 2.000 calories per person per day until the 1820s. Today, the global average is approaching 3.000 calories, and obesity is a growing problem – even in sub-Saharan Africa. Racism, sexism, or homophobia are becoming less common, and as people become more educated and less ignorant, fewer judge others based on skin color, gender, physical appearance, or sexuality. Almost 90 percent of people around the world in 1820 were illiterate. Today, more than 90 percent of humanity is literate. Back in 1870, the total length of schooling for persons aged 24 to 65 was 0,5 years. Today is nine. In the aforementioned ancient Greece and many other cultures, women were the property of men. It wasn't until 1893 that women got the right to vote in New Zealand. Today, the only place where women do not have the right to vote is in the papal elections at the Vatican.

Traveling around the world, both for tourism and business, has never been easier and more accessible to more people than it is now. We enjoy the everyday comforts we have come to take for granted – home delivery, unlimited access to information and entertainment on your phone, home delivery, professional help and consultation, medical or legal, often completely free. Even certain courses from the world's best universities can be taken from home and are also free. The Internet has made a huge number of services part of our everyday lives – email, phone calls, instant messages, video and conference calls, data storage, maps and navigation, music, movies and video games and news are once again available to us at no cost. On our phones, we can compose music, record and process photos, shoot and edit movies, draw and paint, write and process text, keep home or business accounting, and the number of applications that can satisfy even the most unusual needs reaches tens of thousands.

And now, when reason and science have brought us a quality of life that people did not even dare to dream about in the past six thousand years, many of us thought that it all automatically belongs to them and is taken for granted. Nevertheless, history teaches us that any progress is not irreversible, that civilization, enlightenment and culture are very sensitive plants that require careful and daily care. That the dangers are many and that irrationality and obscurantism do not give up easily.

If we look again at the zeitgeist that we talked about at the beginning, it seems that suddenly knowledge and intellect become boring and dry and have to retreat before the so-called. spirituality, whatever that means. Nothing is worth more, neither twenty years of schooling, nor personal education, nor mountains of books, thousands of hours of conversation in which thought was honed, nor social skills and articulate speech, nor logic nor common sense, nor the accumulated knowledge of millions of minds that through the centuries discovered how our world works, all that becomes transcended and absolutely unnecessary, it is enough to be spiritual. And of course, through the carelessly ajar door of our house, which was built by Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Pasteur, Newton, priests and druids of all colors, anarchists and anti-globalists, Facebook gurus, astrologers expelled astronomers, astro-physicists and astronauts from the public space and won the deed with the prefix astro-, numerologists, fortune tellers, white magicians and sorcerers, Orthodox mystics arrived from rehab clinics, TV presenters, yoga flyers, zealots with dubious hygiene habits, autochthonists, apocalypticists are waiting for some serious disease or a rock from space, Christians are hoping for armageddon, the mother of all battles - what disgusting and shameless ideas, spitting lead, fortune-telling and throwing tarot cards, taxi drivers once they drive with one hand, they are baptized with the other hand when they pass by churches...

It would be said that the matter of spirit has never stood better. Fortunately, it all seems that way only on the surface, retrograde ideas and concepts have always been loud and much more interesting to the media, proverbially inclined to entertainment rather than substance. Along with ups and downs, intellect and science, enlightenment and culture prevail. The future is still bright, as was said recently, and if we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, the facts say that we live in the one that is the best so far.